Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Vermont Colleges Trip Part I

Recently, our Student Services Coordinator, Laura, had the
opportunity to go on a college bus tour of 18 colleges across the state of Vermont. New England has such a rich variety of higher
educational opportunities and Vermont
is clearly no exception. Below she’ll
outline her experience and give you an idea about each school and what it has
to offer.

Our first stop on the tour was ChamplainCollege in Burlington.
ChamplainCollege is a small school with about
2000 students. In terms of majors and
programs, Champlain has 4 different divisions: Business, Communication &
Creative Media, Education & Human Studies, Information Technology &
Sciences. The most popular major this
past year was Psychology and the most popular cluster was “Digital Games” –
which includes majors and specializations among the different divisions - Game
Production Management, Game Media, Game Art & Animation, Game Design, Game
Design & Digital Media, Game Writing, Game Programming. Their Digital Forensic Science program is also
becoming more and more popular.

Unique to Champlain, they have instituted an “upside down
educational program” where students engage in classes associated with their
major as soon as they enroll. This way,
they can feel that all of their classes connect and relate with one
another. They can explore their major,
take on internships earlier, and determine areas of particular interest for
specialization and then have four full years to develop the necessary skills
that are vital for their professional success.
Champlain provides numerous internship opportunities for students
beginning very early on in their college career and are available to students
every year they are in college. Because
Champlain is a small school, the professors are able to provide personal
attention and support to their students.
The student to faculty ratio is 15:1 and the average class size is about
18 students.

A very important statistic is that 90% of Champlain
graduates are employed in their field of study within 6 months of
graduation. Not only are most Champlain
grads getting jobs, but 90% are getting jobs within their direct field of study
right out of graduation. Impressive! A unique program at Champlain was their LEAD
(Life Experience and Action Dimension) program, which is a four-year program
for all students designed to help students develop practical life skills that
are meaningful and useful and will serve them throughout their entire life.

City of Burlington

Champlain is one of the three colleges we visited in Burlington, VT. For a student that wants their higher
educational experience to be located in Vermont
but also wants to be close to a city-like atmosphere, Burlington is perfect. Burlington was
close enough for students to walk into town to find entertainment, shopping,
restaurants, the Lake Champlain water front,
etc. Burlington has the look, feel, charm and
friendliness of a small town but the lifestyle, music, food, and arts of a
larger city.

The second school we saw, also in Burlington,
was BurlingtonCollege.
BurlingtonCollege is a very unique,
non-traditional, 40 year old progressive liberal arts school. With only 200 students (50% being from
Vermont), Burlington College is a very small school where students can create
their own major and program of study and have a lot of input on their learning
goals within the curriculum. Burlington
College attracts somewhat of an older student (average student age is 23), as
many of their students are transfer students who go to large colleges and then transfer
to Burlington to find the comfort and support of a very small college with
intense academic advising and support from professors. Currently, the entire college is housed in
one large brick building, almost like a high school, so definitely make sure
you want that intimate feel. When asked
where the library was, they said they had some books in the gym… this was probably due to the fact that they are currently renovating a large part of the
building which used to be an old orphanage, where they will house their new library.
Housing is also a little different at Burlington – there are only 45 spots on
campus and are for first year students only.
It is not, however, your traditional dorm style living. There is also no dining hall or meal plan on
campus. Students need to go grocery shopping
and cook for themselves, so make sure that you are aware and ready for that
kind of non-traditional first year (and beyond) experience.

In terms of programs, the most popular program is their
Cinema Studies and Film Production program that houses about ¼ of the
students. An individualized major that
the student creates themselves is also very popular along with Photography,
Writing & Literature, Human Services, Psychology, and Wood Working. Internships are a requirement for graduation
from all programs. The grading system at
Burlington is
also less traditional. 60% of students
don’t receive letter grades for their work in class. They will either receive credit, receive
low-credit, or a low-pass. BurlingtonCollege does see the functional need of
traditional grades and a more traditional GPA system for financial aid,
admissions to graduate school, and other regulations that are based on GPA, so
they are moving towards a more traditional system.

It should be noted that for first generation college
students (and other college students) who find the entire college admissions
and application process completely overwhelming, BurlingtonCollege
feels as though they work very well with these types of students, giving them a
lot of support during the admissions process.
While Burlington College is so very small, they do have plans to grow to
about 300 students as soon as possible and then eventually grow to about 500-750
students, although they are committed to being a small school on a small campus
that caters to the needs of its students.

If you are interested in BurlingtonCollege,
I highly suggest that you go visit it.
It is a very small, non-traditional school like many we saw on our
trip. You can only get a good idea of
what it will be like being a student there if you actual step foot on the
campus (although this applies to any school).

Saint Michael’s College, or “St. Mike’s”, is a small (or
large compared to what we saw all week!) Catholic college of about 2000
students only about 7 miles (less than 10 minutes) from Burlington.
It is unique in that it is a fully residential college, meaning 100% of
students live on campus. This makes for
a very tight community and a close-knit feel across campus. The college is very service-oriented, which a
lot of Catholic schools are. More than
70% of students at St. Mike’s participate in some kind of service project
through their MOVE program (Mobilization of Volunteer Efforts).

A selling feature for St. Mikes is that it provides research
opportunities to its undergrads.
Students can choose from course-based research for academic credit,
independent research with faculty, summer research, or summer research through
the Center for Social Science Research. Internships
are also available to all students.

Another cool part of St. Mike’s is the online blogs that
students follow. They post quite often
and prospective students can get a feel for what the community life is really like
there. This is the blog from our tour
guide, Marci - http://marcismcbloggers.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html

The majority of students come from somewhere in New England
(80%) with the largest percent coming from Massachusetts (27%), which I thought was
interesting. So if you are from outside
of New England, you have even more reason to
go see what it’s like and make sure that you will feel at home there. In terms of academic programs, students have
the ability to choose from 30 different liberal arts and science majors as well
as Pre-Law, Pre-Med, or Pre-Pharmacy.

From what I got from our tour guide and other students, the
student population is very active on campus.
There are about 40 different student organizations and 25 intramural
teams (in addition to 21 Div II Varsity sports). Our tour guide and other students we spoke
with were involved in many different clubs, sports, and organizations on
campus. While we only saw the main
campus, there is another campus called North campus that is less than a mile
away and houses student residences and studio arts facilities as well as a
dining hall.

An interesting thing that they did on our visit was that
they didn’t show us any dorm room or housing option – instead they played a
video for us that showed us all of the different kinds of housing available to
students, since all 4 years are guaranteed and expected that students will live
on campus. This should link you to the
video we saw of all of their housing options, cleverly called “SMC Kribs”: Click here to view

About Smart Track™
Toolkit: The toolkit is a
web based service that assists families with everything from admissions and
test prep, to student athletics and financial aid. Our intuitive software and
on-demand workshops are key components to making sure students find their top
choice colleges, and families can afford to send them there.

About the author: Laura Guarino is the Student Services Coordinator
with the College Resource Center, LLC. Laura has her BA in Human Development from BostonCollege
and MS in School Counseling from Fitchburg State University. She is also enrolled in a certificate program
in College Admissions Counseling. Laura
is at the forefront of the college admissions process for the families of The Smart
Track™ Toolkit.

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